If it weren't for the fact that CFR is an attempt by Congress to abridge the 1st Amendment, I would suggest that McConnell let it pass, just to show the Reform Party-type ignoramuses how utterly stupid they have been for all these years. McCain is a stone-head of the very first order. The liberals here have bought into it like lemmings.
The pros have already figured our how to operate in our complex political system within the structure of the current CFR bill. They won't lose a beat. The Democratic party supports it only because the believe it gives them an advantage-but that's looking more and more like one of those "intended" consequences that won't come to pass. Courts overturning the very worst of McCain's bill-from-Hell is only gravy-but expect a lot of gravy.
Thus the whole CFR is a public scam that makes Enron look like an honest accident. True campaign finance reform equals strict term limits, pure and simple. Nothing else matters.
Possible "unintended" consequences: Conservatives will go to the Republican party, while liberals will go to the Democrats. That's a continuation of a trend that has been going on since the American left siezed the Dem party in 1970. The idiotic Trent Lotts and Bob Doles will be run out of politics for incompetence, lack of principle, etc., and Republicans who pump the careers of Jeffords types-only to get burned in the end-will be stripped away from the parties. "Hard money" and PAC's will proliferate, and drive the debate over the last two months, and the shit-for-brains Reform types will spend the next twenty years bitching about that.
At the end of the day, the same principle that has always driven politics in large republics will continue to prevail: Power accrues to the best-organized groups of voices (common interests: Hate them all you want, but you are EACH a member of several), and the raising of money for such organization is the MEASURE-not the END RESULT-of successful political organization.
But I still won't go neutral on CFR, because it attacks the Bill of Rights, and may temporarily re-empower the left wing media... |
